Trends in Science and Conflict Coverage in Four Metropolitan Newspapers

Scientists are talking, but mostly to each other: a quantitative analysis of research represented in mass media

“…The content of news stories that appeared in the three US newspapers, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune over three time spans showed that there was a marked increase in total science articles that appeared in later years, though the percentage of articles that cited specific papers remained the same (Pellechia, 1997). This builds on earlier research that showed an increase in science news articles from 1951 to 1971 (Cole, 1975).…”

Scientific Information: A Review of Research

“…The degree of specialization of the writers is also a matter of the nature of the science they are writing about. Cole (15) found that an increasing share of scientific news was about controversies among scientists and that this kind of news thus was more often reported by general journalists than by science journalists. This may also be true of scientific events of a particularly dramatic or sensational kind, such as spaceship launchings, discoveries of unhealthy ingredients in foods, etc.…”

The Double-Edged Sword of Popularization

“…Anderson, Peterson, David, & Allan, 2005;A. A. Anderson et al, 2014;Cole, 1975;Slovic, 1992). Given this dynamic, some have suggested that "good" science journalism helps cultivate positive attitudes toward science and more "objective" social assessments of risk (Weigold, 2001;Ziman, 1992).…”